A related line of work focuses on creating and modeling small molecules, typically in the context of drug design, using similar generative approaches. These small molecules average 44 atoms in size [1]}. Compared to proteins, which average several hundred residues and thousands of atoms [2]}, the relatively small size of small molecules makes them easier to model. The E(3) Equivariant Diffusion Model [3]} uses an equivariant transformer to design small molecules by diffusing on their coordinates in Euclidean space. Other works have explored torsional diffusion, i.e., modelling the angles that specify a small molecule, to sample from the space of energetically favorable molecular conformations [1]}. This work still requires an \(SE(3)\) -equivariant model as the input to their model is still a 3D point cloud. In contrast, our problem formulation allows us to work entirely in terms of relative angles.
